A shame. A great shame. Yes, he did that silly thing in booking a player three times but hands up any of you who haven’t made a daft mistake in your life… thought so. He’s been our best, most consistent referee for many years now and his thoughts deserve airtime and respect. Forget that you were at a game once when he made a crap decision, it is immaterial. he’s been a great professional. Even Colina made mistakes. Just that people were too scared to say so.

Unfortunately, the FA are ‘disappointed’ with some of his comments so far. And no doubt they’ll be apoplectic when they read his book. Their reaction should have been to listen and try and understand. But no, falling into line with players and clubs is far more, er, lucrative. They do not realise the game is actually in trouble. Referees are leaving in their thousands because they get no respect, no support and no credit for a very difficult job. I tried it once. Good grief, never again. Insanely difficult and I had good friends of mine yelling right into my face for getting it wrong. No refs = no football. Ignorance of laws = chaos. Unless some, actually quite simple, changes are made, one day the bubble will truly burst.

I’m going to do a series of posts (in the Sport Tech section) on what should (but won’t) be done to improve the standards of sportsmanship, respect and fair play in the game. Give me a couple of weeks and the first one will be up. This has nothing to do with research and everything to do with other commitments outside of blogosphere (yes, there is such a place).